Next "Obamacare" worry: Getting enrollees to pay premium

[link to mobile.bloomberg.com] Aetna Inc. (AET), the third-biggest U.S. health insurer, has seen Obamacare enrollments increase since the federal government declared its troubled website fixed last week. Now, the concern is getting people to pay their premiums.

“We have a bigger number of applicants than people who have paid,” Aetna Chief Financial Officer Shawn Guertin said in an interview today in New York . “That’s a situation that I am a little bit worried about, that people will think they have completed the process but haven’t paid the premium yet.”

The disjointed process of having customers shop through the government-run marketplace and then pay insurers separately has created a risk that people who have chosen a plan won’t actually be covered Jan. 1. And if people don’t pay by Dec. 31, insurers may end up stuck with a disproportionate number of sicker and costlier customers.

“You have to remember that many times we are dealing with low-income people,” Robert Laszewski, an Alexandria, Virginia-based consultant to carriers, said in a telephone interview last week. “They signed up and they certainly want the insurance, but do they have the money or have they changed their mind by Dec. 31? Nobody’s done this before.”

Almost 365,000 people in October and November chose a private plan through federal and state exchanges creat